Can Testosterone Can Hurt Poker Play?

When Dutch researchers decided to investigate the effect of testosterone on human behavior, they chose poker as the ‘guinea pig’ - and their results make for some very surprising reading!

Apparently, increased testosterone levels at the poker table has almost the opposite effect from what most would imagine – with crazy risk-taking and bravado replaced by “risk-averse strategic thinking”.

The study at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands used twenty female players to assess the effects of the hormone, giving half of them lozenges laced with the drug and the other half placebos.

They then arranged for a simplified form of heads-up poker to see how they would react to fairly simple decision-making situations. Would those who were boosted with the hormone bluff more? Take more risks in general? Or would they actually display enhanced ”co-operative behaviors,” as some suggested?

Testosterone often gets bad press; high-levels are accredited as responsible for everything from wars to domestic violence and “scientists widely agree that testosterone motivates individual animals to strive for social dominance”, says Kaycee James on Pokersites.com.

In the poker scenario dreamed up by Utrecht University’s Psychology Department, however, the ‘individualistic’ approach argued by many scientists failed to appear, with a more “socialistic” outcome prevailing.

The method used was very simple – although perhaps too simple to read too much into this one study. The female players had to choose whether to make high or low bets based on their initial hand strength. Two lows or two highs would simply see the cards turned over and the winner taking down the pot.

However, should one person bet high, and the other low, then the low bettor could choose whether to simply call – or fold. Raising seems not have been an option in this study.

As the researchers explained:

This makes perfect sense: the one thing that a player should never, ever do is just call, because it is the least profitable long-term strategy.

So, the optimal strategy of the Dutch psychologist’s game is designed to give a disadvantage to those seeking reputable status through ‘cooperative behaviors’ – testosterone-fuelled players should be ‘bluffing’ way more often, and the study should reflect that.

However, and here is where the predictions were turned upside-down, those females drugged-up on the hormone proved to be much more likely to just call than those not on the drug! The most ‘risk-averse behaviour’ actually came from the least expected group.

The researchers attribute this to the callers being “reputable status seekers,” who would never dream of “being caught in a ‘cheat’, such as a bluff.”

In effect, the researchers discovered that administering testosterone clearly suggests that “the hormone does indeed trigger co-operative behavior and is undeserved of its bad reputation”. Who would have thought it?

Although no further studies have been mooted so far, an interesting one would involve ‘raising’ being allowed in the game’s rules, to test whether calling would still be the preferred option if the stakes were higher and a showdown were not inevitable as with calling.